ANY BM carries it. I like it, but I am not in love with it, and I recognise its limitations as a building material.
Its like leaded 5 star petrol and organic vegetables. They have their place, but one should not get carried away with a misplaced nostalgia for the supposed Golden Age of Lime Mortar etc.
Just to add some more facts about this wall.
It is a very exposed, and badly neglected wall. In some parts when I discovered that rain was getting in, I could poke my fingers through some of the holes. The pointing is in a terrible shape.
I have done some repointing to stop the rain entering, Yes, I used cement, and it has now stopped any rain penetrating through holes, but I dare say it is still oozing through the poor brickwork.
All the spalling is on the inside.
On the room side of the wall, the roof above is a sloping pitched roof (one way, sloping down from the wall above the room, to the wall on the other side of the room). it is in this void where the damage is. (The other wall is in excellent shape. It is just the other stretch of wall that is so bad) It seems that most of the houses here have problems with the wall on that side due to the elements bashing it. We have had several very rainy, windy days here and I have poked my head up there daily with a light and have seen no rain ingress at all, although it may still be oozing through the brickwork, but I saw no obvious sign of it.
There is absolutely NO insulation at all there at the moment, or has been in the past. There has been loads of air flow because the brickwork up there has been so bad.
The room below has been very, very cold during cold spells in Winter, even with the radiator working at max. I am assuming this is because of no insulation and the holes allowing the wind to penatrate.
Obviously, I want to stabalise the spalling, waterproof the outside and then insulate like hell, before replacing the part of the ceiling that has been removed.
Steve...
heh.
I think this is everyones initial response, why dont you just put a waterproof coat on it. People have been doing that for decades and what happens, contrary to their expectations, is the damp then gets worse over time, not better. Old properties handle damp perfectly well as per original design, but when the mechanisms by which they do it are not understood, and inappropriate measures such as waterproof coatings adopted, things only get worse.
If you ever discover this is the case, you may then become willing to learn more about how they do work, and why waterproof coatings are, counterintuitively, the exact opposite of the solution.
NT
If it were penetration it would normally be the outside breaking up first. Your bricks must be drier under the surface on the outside of the wall at freeze times.
rain does not ooze through brickwork. In driving rain it can penetrate mortar if in bad enough condition.
then youll go the same route as every other person that has treated these problems superficially and reap the same results. I'm not going to sit here and explain it, go read up on damp at
NT
good to see well argued logical fact based input. Its what we need here.
NT
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